Bonus Video - Look Towards the Land by Bruce Springsteen

I am certain I'm very late in coming across this song as a Springsteen fan, but I just had to post it here and share.

#95 Jackson Cage by Bruce Springsteen

“You can try with all your might
But you're reminded every night
That you been judged and handed life
Down in Jackson Cage”

Jackson Cage tells the story of life born behind the bars of socioeconomic inequality. This young woman feels she is just another faceless piece of her small world. Someone else’s twisted vision (“the hand that turns the key”) has cast her as an extra in the production of her own life. “Some folks are born into a good life”…and many are sentenced from day one to a life that feels like little more than punishment for someone else’s sins.

This nameless child swims upstream every day but every night finds herself back where she started. Her blinds are closed to any vision that may exist outside of her world. Like any cage, her life limits her awareness of other possibilities. She can only see the bars of injustice, and so she settles in to a life of survival.

Her story reminds us that “personal choice”, a buzz phrase that has swept the vocabularies of those who refuse to see the MUCH MUCH bigger picture of our world, is the smallest piece of the pie that allows someone to break out of their prison. When the life you are born into lands you, not even on first base, not even in the dugout, so far from any resemblance of a “good life”, that you cannot even see the field or even know that one exists, “personal choice” is not even in your awareness. At the very least, “personal choice” exists only in the realm of choosing the lesser of two evils.

And we are reminded of our human connectedness and our responsibility to help one another. Everything we do can change or perpetuate the cycle of poverty and hopelessness for our fellow man. “Without a vision people perish” (somewhere in the Bible). Instead of judging them as they may feel so many do and pushing them further from view, let us lend hope and a compassionate hand to “lives on the line” down in these isolated worlds, and help remove the bondage and barricades of these prison towns like Jackson Cage.

For Complete Lyrics Visit: http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/JacksonCage.html

#94 It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City by Bruce Springsteen

“The devil appeared like Jesus through the steam in the street
Showin' me a hand I knew even the cops couldn't beat
I felt his hot breath on my neck as I dove into the heat
It's so hard to be a saint when you're just a boy out on the street”

It’s been so long since my last post. I think back to the day I said I was going to write about one song per day. Even if I wasn’t working full time and going to school, I still do not think that would be a possibility. Each song requires so much reflection, and I never feel I reflect enough to do them justice.

This current song is just not grabbing me in any way and I feel at a loss to write about it. My head is swarming with the names of all the bones of the body and now the muscles – words like epicranial aponeurosis and my confusion over the final episode of LOST as well as my concern over my sick kitty are overpowering Springsteen’s beautiful visions -“the devil appeared like Jesus through the steam in the street”. I can’t even begin to write about this song.

Ok it just hit me. Yes just now. That is exactly what this song is about. It’s about distractions. It’s about trying to stay on a course yet finding yourself pulled by temptation or drained by the necessary evils aboard this life train. It would be so much easier to let life derail me from my goal. How important is this goal really I ask myself when I’m much too tired to even open a Word document to start typing.

So, once again I have to remind myself why I even began this in the first place. I wanted to improve my writing. I wanted to set a goal that would inspire me to write and keep me writing on a consistent basis. I wanted to test out the writer in me and see who wins – the student on her way to becoming an Occupational Therapist – or the artist who still dreams of one day having a dream job that involves writing or music or something more passionate than my current/future occupation provides.

The practical me has been winning. It’s important, yes. But so is this project of mine. Even if only to finish what I set before me. I don’t want to be another “sage on the subway” while something or someone else “clacks out the rhythm” of my life. I want to be “out on the street” making things happen, choosing my own paths, small and large.

Yes, this post was mostly about me. But sometimes to get through a writing block you need to write about what’s in your head – push out the cork that is blocking the flow – oh no – now I’m thinking about LOST again…

For Complete Lyrics Visit: http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/ItsHardToBeASaintInTheCity.html